When I lived in Spain I used to complain about how long the holiday season lasted: it seemed to stretch all the way from the fiestas at the beginning of December until past Twelfth Night.**
Here in the UK, though, much as I was bemoaning the supermarket aisles crammed with marzipan, iced cake and mince pies back in October, Christmas seems to be a bit of a flash in the pan.
Continue reading “almost over”
“[T]here is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
As Shakespeare clearly understood when he had Hamlet say the above line, everything in life is affected by our personal perspective.
And our perspective depends very much on where we were born and brought up, and on the social and family values we were exposed to as children. Even beauty is a learned concept.
Continue reading “it’s complicated**”
This post dodges about a bit between the UK and Spain, so it’s probably not unreasonable that although I start off talking about the UK postal service, the lions in the picture are actually from the post office in Avila, Spain.
Back in the dim and distant past, you could post a letter in the morning at one end of the country and know it would be delivered at the other end of the country the next day. Indeed, I think that if you caught the early collection, or if it had to go a shorter distance, it would be delivered that same afternoon.
Continue reading “second post”
Despite the glorious flowers still to be found in window boxes and tubs around the town, summer is officially over: the days have been getting shorter and Thursday was the Autumn Equinox.
I think all the local churches have either had their harvest festival or have it scheduled for tomorrow and the thought of harvest has reminded me once more of Spain. We didn’t pay much attention to the garden but even untended trees produce blossom and fruit as the year turns.
Continue reading “autumn memories”
The other morning, after heavy rain in the night, one of the neighbour’s shrubs – perhaps a Cotinus coggygria – was covered in a silver sheen of water droplets, the effect of which I fear I have utterly failed to capture in the photos here.
I was reminded that when I first lived in California I was convinced that the weather there was perfect: sunny and warm all day and rain every night. I’m not sure how long I’d been there before I realised that in fact the song is right – seems it never rains in Southern California – and the cool green lawns were due to timer-activated sprinklers.
Continue reading “a world in a drop of rain”
don't confuse the narrator 